At least Hitler gave the Germans the Autobahn

On the day President Obama announced his re-election plans, the Republicans launched their ten-year budget programs that would eliminate Medicare and Medicaid. On top of this, the House GOP has scheduled a vote--even though meaningless--where their members have to vote to kill Medicare. Astonishing. For years, Social Security was considered the "Third Rail" of politics. In this case, the GOP hit the Trifecta.

In the Beltway, the pundits--all earning from 5 to 10 times the average American's income--are fawning over Paul Ryan's Attack on America. These are the same people who are demanding social security reform even though it has no problems. One of the strangest things is that none of these Einsteins are saying that because of the Affordable Care Act, Medicare will actually have a surplus in 2014.

As I've written several times about the Ryan Plan, the numbers simply don't add up and never will. Paul Krugman in his piece "The 2022 Medicare Crisis" goes further in explaining how demented Ryan's Medicare plan really is--increasing both Medicare costs and lowering the quality of healthcare for Americans as now senior citzens are turned into customers for the new profits centers of the health insurance industry.

In my opinion, there are two things at work here. Ryan's plan assumes the Affordable Care Act will be repealed and then he has to produce for the health insurance industry the 40 million new customers they would have lost with the repeal. The other is to launch the final offensive against all the programs in our social welfare system. I guess we should be grateful that the Republicans have openly come out to dismantle anything in America that would benefit anyone.

Since no one actually thinks anymore, the GOP has captured the media's imagination with headlines of a $5-7 trillion cut in the national debt over 10 years. The same media never gave any attention to the debt reduction of President Obama's Affordable Care Act or his proposeed 2012 budget. If you did some math, you would realize that the difference is savings is about $2 trillion and that you can go deeper simply by raising taxes on the very wealthy, trimming the national security budget, and cutting some programs.

What is missing in the Ryan Plan is any sense that government has any role in setting the economic priorities of the future. There is no sense of investment. But we saw this before with the conservatives claiming government is overhead. So naturally, cut the overhead and life would be fine.

Now the Nations' Chris Hayes reminded us on the Rachel Maddow Show that all the House Republicans won in 2010 because they ran attack ads against the Democrats claiming they would be cutting a billions from Medicare. Once this vote in the House occurs, the Democrats should cut ads on every incumbent Republican splicing their 2010 attack ad on Medicare cut and then shots of their vote to kill the entire program. And run this incessantly. You'll remember The Medicare attacks ads were the brainchild of Karl Rove and paid for by the billionaire's club.

From a political point of view, the Democrats would be guilty of political malfeasance if they didn't pound on this issue throughout 2012. The basic reason is that the only demographic that supports the Repubicans now are the senior citizens and a shade of those over 55. The Republicans are gambling wildly with their base, which happens to support both Medicare and Social Security. Demographically challenged with every minority, the Republicans also want to bet the ranch on the white vote. The Democrats should encourage this.

I would be fascinated to learn from one of the new Republicans in private how their vision of a corporate state actually benefits anyone, other than the top 1%. Not even Hitler would oppose funding the Interstate Highway Fund.